December 10, 1974
Page 38896
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I join in supporting the amendment of the senior Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. KENNEDY) to delete the $57.5 million in the AEC supplemental authorization bill designed to permit an acceleration of nuclear weapons testing.
I support the inclusion in the bill of $23 million to improve the transportation security of nuclear materials. Safeguarding such materials from diversion from their intended uses appears warranted and I intend to support that part of the pending legislation. I do, however, have serious doubts about the wisdom of our authorization at this time of a large amount of new money for a stepped-up nuclear testing program.
Mr. President, the $57.5 million supplemental authorization request for accelerated nuclear testing is directly tied to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty. By that agreement, which was signed in Moscow on July 3, 1974, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed to end testing above the 150 kiloton level after March 31, 1976. On September 4 of this year, the Atomic Energy Commission requested new funds for high yield testing, testifying before the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy that certain revisions were necessary in its final year 1975 test program as a result of the threshold test ban accord.
As yet, the Threshold Test Ban Agreement has not been submitted to the Senate for ratification.
And it now appears – due to differences between us end the Soviets concerning peaceful nuclear explosions – that the agreement may never be submitted. If there is a long delay in submitting the Threshold Treaty, or if there is no treaty at all, then presumably there is no need for an immediate and expensive acceleration of our weapons testing program.
I believe that approval of these supplemental funds should await the submission of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty to Congress. Or in the absence of this, the Executive should come before Congress and make a case for an accelerated testing program not premised on the Threshold Test Ban accord. The Executive has not done this. Nor has it testified to my satisfaction about the foreign policy implications of going ahead with an accelerated testing program at this time.
I wonder, for example, how the Soviets are likely to interpret such a speedup of our testing program, given that the Threshold Test San Treaty contains a pledge by both the United States and the Soviet Union "to limit the number of its underground tests to a minimum" and continue to try for "a solution to the problem of the cessation of all underground nuclear weapon tests."
Would the Soviets interpret the "minimum" testing provision in the same lax manner that we seem to interpret it, and accelerate their own testing program? I do not have an answer to this question. But I would be most interested to hear Secretary Kissinger's opinion about it before approving these funds for a new series of tests.
I also wonder what effect the accelerated testing program would have on the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference scheduled to begin this spring in Geneva? In the postwar period, a major foreign policy goal of this country has been to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. An accelerated program at this time might well undermine this goal and doom the review conference.
Nations like Brazil, Argentina, Pakistan, and others might then be gravely tempted to follow India's lead along the nuclear route. Are any of the newly planned weapons tests of such overriding security importance to warrant the risk of dooming the NPT review conference and encouraging the further proliferation of nuclear weapons? I doubt it, especially since the AEC has seen fit to conduct only two tests in the last 4 years above the 150-kiloton level, one of these being a test of the Spartan warhead now no longer needed as a result of the ABM Treaty of 1972.
Finally, I wonder how this testing program relates to the recently concluded Vladivostok accords. The preliminary agreement at Vladivostok establishes for the first time limits on MIRVed missiles possessed by the United States and the Soviet Union. This limitation will undoubtedly lead to an extensive reevaluation of our strategic weapons program.
Does it make sense to go ahead at this time with an expensive crash program for testing nuclear devices when our strategic needs may change once a reevaluation of our strategic arsenal has taken place? It seems to me that the wisdom of going ahead with an accelerated testing program should be analyzed fully in light of the Vladivostok agreement, an agreement concluded after the AEC supplemental request was submitted.
Mr. President, in both the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty and the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States and the Soviet Union promised to try to achieve an end to all nuclear testing.
As chairman f the Arms Control Subcommittee, I have held hearings on the prospects for a comprehensive test ban treaty each year for the past 3 years. On each occasion, both administration and outside witnesses have testified in support of a comprehensive test ban.
Thirty-seven Senators, including the distinguished sponsor of this amendment and myself, are presently cosponsors of a resolution urging the President to begin negotiations to conclude a comprehensive test ban treaty. In recent months, the Soviet Government has announced its support for ending all nuclear tests. All the momentum teems to be in the direction of stopping nuclear weapons testing rather than speeding it up. And I think we should think very carefully before taking any step likely to have the effect of slowing down – or perhaps reversing – that momentum.
So, Mr. President, I favor deleting the $57.5 million in this bill for accelerated nuclear tests. I believe we should defer consideration f the proposed authorization until early in the next session. By that time, the Executive will have had the opportunity to address itself to some of the concerns I have raised and some of the larger issues raised by this authorization request.